Experiment NO: 06

Experiment Name: Fatigue failure analysis and case study.

Experiment Name : Fatigue failure analysis and case study .
Abstract: Fatigue is weakening of material caused by cyclic
loading. Many disasters have happened by neglecting the effect
of fatigue. Like landing gear failure, roller bearing failure,
helicopter blade or wind turbine blade failure.

Introduction: As fatigue cause by cyclic loading so when a

structure will face cyclic load the stress of the structure will
vary from one part to another. Some portion of structure will
feel tension and some portion will feel compression, and this
process create a fluctuating stress. Hence the flactuating stress
with respect to time will be sinusoidal curve. Mainly This
fluctuating load / stress is the root case of fatigue failure.
Theory:
Some factors that are necessary to cause fatigue failure:
a. sufficient high maximum tensile stress.
b. large variation or fluctuation in stress
c. sufficiently large number of stress cycle.
When maximum tensile stress is applied to a structure or if
the structure feel large variation in stress with large number of
stress cycle, it will initiate micro crack in the structure. This
crack will began grow with further fluctuating stress and will
cause a abrupt failure. It happens without any warning.
S-N curve for fatigue : stress amplitude and number of
cycle plays important role in fatigue life.

It says if
The amplitude of stress (S) increases, the number of
cycle to failure (N) is decreases. And vice versa.
 If we applied stress below fatigue limit or endurance limit
the very large number of cycle will be create, or we can say
material will never fail.
As fluctuating stress creates micro crack, stages before it
comes to failure is:
a. Crack Nucleation : crack will initiates the result
fluctuating stress and usually initiate at the location of high
stress.
b. Crack Propagate or Crack Growth : crack will propagate
with further variation of stress. Beach mark is the visual proof
of crack propagate

Fig: stages of fatigue failure

c. fracture : Crack has propagate far enough that the
structure is insufficient to carry the load and fails.
 Case study
Eschede train disasters, 1998.

Background information and Data collection : On 3

June, 1998 a serious accident occurs in Eschede. We know that
the first high speed train in the world was introduced by Japan.
A High speedy ‘Inter City Express’ (ICE 1) train derailed at
speed (approximately 200 km/h) and hit a overpass then that
overpass collapse on the train.
This train was the 1st generation of ICE train which have
two power head/engine along with 10 to 12 cars. At 1 st
monobloc single cast wheels are used for ICE trains, but
then it was replaced by new type rubber-sprung resilient
wheels (type BA 064) for ICE 1 trains, to avoid metal
fatigue and vibrations at high speeds.

Fig: Monobloc single cast wheel

Fig: Rubber Sprung wheel

 Unfortunately the new design doesn’t workout and
resulting a failure in the one of the rubber sprung wheel.
After a quick stop in Hanover at 10:30, the train continued its
journey northwards. About 6 km away from Eschede, at a
speed of 200km/h (approx.), the wheel tire of the last rubber-
sprung wheel on the right side of first car broke down by
creating a big noise and violent vibrations. That punctured the
floor of first car and become emberdded in that floor. Rather
than applying emergency brake the train continued to move. As
the train passed through a switch, the end of the broken wheel
tire scooped up the guide rail (guide rails used to guide railways
safely at switch point) and the guide rail smashed into the floor
of first coach. The strike was massive enough to cause
derailment of the two wheels. At that stage if the train still
could have been stopped by emergency brakes, the derailment
might not had turned into a big catastrophe. Then when the
train approached the second switch, one of the derailed wheels
struck the switch, this caused the rear axle of next car to be
pulled onto a parallel track, violently derailing the car, which
struck and destroyed the main supports of an overpass bridge.
Several more cars, traveling at 200 km/h, struck the bridge until
it collapsed completely.
Preliminary Observation:
1. The train traveled over 3 km before derailing.
2. Passengers noticed the wheel rim when it came through the
floor of the rail car. As the Policy required the train manager
investigate the damage before stopping the train. Conductor
didn’t see the damange and didn’t activate the emergency
brake.
3. A single train wheel failed, causing a chain reaction which
lead to this big catastrophe.

Main reason of failure:

The root cause of that failure is metal fatigue. At the speed of
200km/h, when the last wheel on the right side of the first car
suffered from a fatigue crack, causing devastating results.
ICE 1 was equipped with mono bloc wheels as well as rubber-
sprung wheels. The fractured wheel was a dual bloc rubber-
sprung resilient wheel . Generally these Rubber-Sprung wheels
consisted of a steel wheel disc, a steel wheel tire (outer wheel
rim) and a number of rubber pads, sandwiched between wheel
disc and wheel tire, to minimize the noise problem. The wheel
tire made of steel, which was broken when a fatigue crack
finally propagated through it . The crack was originated near
the center of the inner surface of the wheel tire which contacts
the rubber block and where the highest stress level in the
wheel tire was located. Fatigue failure occurred, even at low
mean level stress, because of the extra thinning of the wheel
tire.

Understanding Main Mechanism of fracture:

1. Rubber pads are used as the middle portion of sandwich
structure. Rubber losses its elasticity and gets thinner at high
speed. As the wheel had a circular shape ,the tires were
flattened into an ellipse as the wheel turned through each
revolution (approximately 500,000 times during a typical day).
That means the rubber pads felt compression and tension in
every revolution. In this method rubber got thinner by bending
effect And caused small free space between while tire and
wheel disk. In this space stress was concentrated and a micro
crack was created near the inner surface of wheel tire.
2. As the train travelled, the inner wheel disc also worn out and
its diameter reduced which caused further severe dynamic and
cyclic loadings on the wheel tire making it thinner and
weakened it. This resulted in increasing the stress
amplifications on a single point on the inner side of wheel tire,
from where the crack initiated and finally propagated to cause
failure.
3. As the tire became thinner due to wear, the dynamic forces
were exaggerated, resulting in crack growth.

Chain Event:
1. Crack propagation: After microcrack was initiated, cyclic
loading on tire was continued as the train run continuously.
How much time a structure will get before failure it depends on
its number of cycle.

2. Fracture: Crack propagate and at a point it couldn’t bear the

stress and failed.

3. Derailment: Failure of wheel tire caused breakage of

wheel. The speed of train was 200km/h, but it couldn’t move
forward because of broken wheel, hence caused derailment.
Microstructure Obsrvation:
Beach mark

Catastrophic
fracture

Beach marks prove crack propagation because of cyclic load.

Per beach is created by per cyclic load.
Cyclic load is observed by rotation of wheel.

Other issues for this failure:

1. Poor Operational Testing/Inspection Procedures. Engineers
were unable to detect the cracks inside the wheel tire or disc.
And also micro crack wasn’t visible in normal flash light.
2. Design system failure. Rubber-sprung wheels used in ICE-1
had various limitations and were not appropriate to be used on
high speed ICE trains. Reduction in wheel tire and its increased
flexing resulted in increased bending stress that ultimately led
to the fatigue failure

Conclusion: The fracture of the wheel tire that brought

Eschede disaster was caused by a fatigue crack, which finally
propagated at a relatively low stress due to reduced cross
section of tire. As the thickness of tire reduced, the bending
stress on it increased and cause fatigue failure. Within a week
after the accident all the rubber-sprung wheels were changed
with the conventional monobloc wheels cause rubber sprung
wheel works good at significantly lower speeds.